Improve Your Baseball Swing with a Hitting Tee
Hitting off of a tee is the best practice for your swing and it doesn't demand help from anybody else but you. Of course, the objective for this drill is to get the baseball bat from a comfortable resting point to the point of contact as efficiently and as accurately as possible. The ball is always put at the ideal point of contact in the strike for an inside, down the middle, or outside pitch. Undeniably, this will train your muscles to remember the correct swing for those various points of contact because it is something that should be done religiously everyday. You will develop an excellent, but more important a consistent swing. Getting set up in a position to hit the pitch squarely will be automatic.
Placing the tee at every point in the strike zone is very important to maximize the drill. Remember, when practicing to hit the ball to opposite fields, you want to let the pitch move further into the hitting zone before making contact. That is why you place the tee on the back portion of the plate. Put the tee over the middle of the plate to simulate a perfect pitch and practice hitting the ball straight up the middle 'through the box'. Improving your ability to hit any type of pitch and increasing your plate coverage is the objective.
When adjusting the elevation of the tee you should change it back and forth from high to low, enabling your body and hands to feel the various points of correct contact. Primarily, you want to raise the tee as high as possible in your strike zone because it will force you to keep your hands up and 'strong' throughout your swing. It can help to eliminate any unwanted dropping of the hands and back shoulder. Imagine your shoulders as an 'airplane' trying to land. You would want the wings of the plane to be level as you hit the runway and it is the same for your shoulders when swinging at a baseball. If you find yourself hitting the tee at all or popping the ball up off the tee, it is a sign that you are dropping your hands or shoulder or both.
Joe Rodgers has taught batting mechanics at all competitive levels of baseball.
Published February 18th, 2008
Filed in Sport
